I’m not sure it’s fair if the product ends up making a boat loads of money. Games are high risk but a very lucrative industry. Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job.
Worth noting that Football is a legal cartel, explicitly excluded from antitrust law. You can't really extrapolate much from it as an example.
It's true of association football (soccer) as well, and that's much less cartel-ised. The players have successfully extracted such a high proportion of the surplus that the returns for the club owners as a group are negative.
Or you end up like Europe. With long maternity leave, paid sick days, overtime pay etc.
Posts about unions on HN always skew towards negativity because in the US, unions are seen as bad. (Well done corporate america for that PR coup!) They often can't see the benefits, which are often large and numerous.
What else are they going to say in public? "Our plan is to engage in union-busting as much as we can legally get away with"? And what one company said is then compared to what another company actually did? Come on! This statement doesn't make MS an outlier, it's simply devoid of information content.
Well, the president of CWA (the union) also praises them: > “Microsoft has lived up to its commitment to its workers and let them decide for themselves whether they want a union,” CWA President Chris Shelton said. “Other videogame and tech giants have made a conscious choice to attack, undermine, and demoralize their own employees when they join together to form a union.”
...there's an obvious zero-sum game involved when unions negotiate with companies. Think of other zero-sum games like negotiating a price. Have you ever asked a salesperson about a price and heard them say "..the highest I can possibly extract from you"? No? Have you ever heard a salesperson say "I'll get you a great deal!" Yes? Does that convince you that most salespeople are really big on altruism?
Game companies need this. It’s one of the “software engineering” adjacent subfields that is extremely exploited. The salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high. The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. This is good, I hope the employees at ActivisionBlizzard can finalize their union if they’re purchased by Microsoft.
I always try to see into the eyes of all those "stars", "project-managers" and "pr"-talkers, as they try to entice the next generation to wreck themselves, to keep the scam going. Hollywood, Paris, Gamer-town, the beast hungers for fresh flesh and minds. And even if you make it, it will be due to feeding the next generation into the grinder.
You left out Broadway and most professional sports leagues
I’m not sure it’s fair if the product ends up making a boat loads of money. Games are high risk but a very lucrative industry. Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job.
Football players aren’t replaceable. At least not at the level people are willing to pay too dollar to watch.
Yes they are. College football gets big ratings every year with replaced players.
I’m not sure it’s fair if the product ends up making a boat loads of money. Games are high risk but a very lucrative industry. Just look at how successful football players were in getting a slice of the pie. I’d still consider that a dream job.
Not that successful, assuming you're talking about American football. The players as a whole get a bit less than half of all revenue coming in despite being the ones to actually, you know, play the game.
Well, they (and the others) should be getting even less. States or cities subsidizing stadiums isn't as beneficial as originally thought. Those making obscene amounts of money from a public resource should probably contribute more to the infrastructure required to make that money.
Game companies need this. It’s one of the “software engineering” adjacent subfields that is extremely exploited. The salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high. The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. This is good, I hope the employees at ActivisionBlizzard can finalize their union if they’re purchased by Microsoft.
> The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. Doesn't that make it a fair trade? Musicians generally don't make a killing either.
Game companies need this. It’s one of the “software engineering” adjacent subfields that is extremely exploited. The salaries are low, the work is stressful, crunch is high. The reason for this dangerous combo? You’re working your dream job. This is good, I hope the employees at ActivisionBlizzard can finalize their union if they’re purchased by Microsoft.
Have you ever worked in a company with a union? Look what just happened to the railroad workers. The US government forced them back to work and gave everything to the companies. Unions are effectively a corporation running labor. So you go from working for the company to working for your union rep. They then pimp you out and get kick backs. Wanna leave your job for another company or role? Good luck, you drop in seni…
Have you ever worked in a company with a union? Look what just happened to the railroad workers. The US government forced them back to work and gave everything to the companies. Unions are effectively a corporation running labor. So you go from working for the company to working for your union rep. They then pimp you out and get kick backs. Wanna leave your job for another company or role? Good luck, you drop in seni…
> That’s not to say you can’t collaborate and organize. Ive organized my coworkers to make changes before, no union involved. Informal organization (i.e. without the legal protections that formal unions have) only works in industries where the staff isn't fungible. A warehouse, fastfood chain or a lot of IT industry has the advantage for the employer that the staff is fungible. Fire everyone, pay a bit in fines for a…
Unions work best when the people need some amount of training such that you can't just hire new people, but otherwise they are inter-changeable. If you work an assembly line your pace of work is dictated by the slowest station/worker, no matter how good you are at your job you are not better than anyone else. Tech work there are ways you can be better than someone else and so unions don't work as well. (don't confuse with don't work at all, just that they don't work as well because we are not all in it together)
Have you ever worked in a company with a union? Look what just happened to the railroad workers. The US government forced them back to work and gave everything to the companies. Unions are effectively a corporation running labor. So you go from working for the company to working for your union rep. They then pimp you out and get kick backs. Wanna leave your job for another company or role? Good luck, you drop in seni…
I find it weird that nobody in the US seems to look beyond their country or similar systems for different models regarding this. Here in Belgium we have some industry specific unions like for rail (idk how the government in the US forces em to do anything). But most unions are cross industry. They aren't really noticed when working in the context of a specific company too often unless mediation is needed when big lay…